Jimmy Kimmel has just revealed two generous friends in Hollywood who were willing to pay the late-night host’s staff during the ongoing writers’ strike. Matt Damon and Ben Affleck were the duo who were willing to pay Kimmel’s staff out of their own pockets. Kimmel, however, decided to reject the offer, feeling that it was not Affleck and Damon’s responsibility to pay his staff.
Damon and Kimmel have an ongoing ‘feud’ that dates back to 2005 and showed up during the late-night host’s announcement about the offer. Kimmel appeared on the podcast Strike Force Five alongside other talk-show hosts Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers, Jimmy Fallon, and John Oliver, where he shared the news.
“Ben Affleck and the despicable Matt Damon contacted me and offered to pay our staff for two weeks,” Kimmel said.
Damon has been a vocal supporter of the writer and actor strikes currently taking over Hollywood. Just before the actors’ strike took hold, Damon spoke with the AP at a red carpet event where he talked about the importance of the union protecting actors.
“We have to protect the people who are kind of on the margins,” Damon said at the time. “Twenty-six thousand bucks a year is what you have to make to get your health insurance, and there are a lot of people whose residual payments are what carry them across that threshold. If those residual payments dry up, so does their healthcare, and that’s absolutely unacceptable.”
While on the podcast, Kimmel also revealed how the strike has impacted his career, or more accurately, his retirement.
“I was very intent on retiring right around the time when the strike started,” Kimmel said. “And now I realize, oh yeah, it’s kind of nice to work.”
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